,
7 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
It’s as if she read my WaPo Op-Ed...
Fun Fact: My entire career as a healthcare wonk/analyst happened because Sebelius garbled a single response to a question about how to define success during the ACA’s first Open Enrollment Period.
Fun Fact: My entire career as a healthcare wonk/analyst happened because Sebelius garbled a single response to a question about how to define success during the ACA’s first Open Enrollment Period.
She gave an interview shortly before the exchanges launched in October 2013. They asked her how she’d define success. She responded that success “looked like 7 million people enrolling by the end of March”. Somehow that 7 million figure took on mythic, magical powers.
The media decided that if 7 million didn’t enroll as of midnight 3/31/14, the earth would open up and swallow the nation whole. It was absurd. I decided to track how many actually DID enroll on a daily basis. You know the rest.
The thing is, the 7 million figure came from a CBO projection of how many people they EXPECTED to enroll the first period. They didn’t say that the law would fail if the total came up a bit short. Yet somehow hitting the 7,000,000 mark by 3/31 became do or die for the ACA.
As it happens, they DID break 7M by the deadline, almost exactly.
acasignups.net/14/03/31/boom-…
acasignups.net/14/03/31/boom-…
Actually, there was such a backlog the final week that they allowed for a two-week “overtime” period. The final tally ended up being exactly 8,019,763 policy enrollments as of mid-April.
acasignups.net/14/04/17/boom-…
acasignups.net/14/04/17/boom-…
Heh...I posted this on 3/30/14...
